I Hate Everyone, Except You(52)

“Why are you in Chicago again?” he asked me.

“I’m getting my master’s in journalism at Northwestern,” I said.

“You’re not studying restaurant management?”

“No.”

“Then shut up.”

He was kind of a dick.

He told me I couldn’t trade tables with Thomas, out of spite, I was sure. I grabbed a water pitcher from the service station and approached my new deuce. “Hi, guys, my name is Clinton, I’ll be your waiter tonight. Can I get—”

“Vodka and cranberry,” said L.D. without looking up at me.

“—you something from the bar.” I can’t stand being interrupted. “One vodka and cranberry, and how about for you, sir?” I tried to make eye contact with S.B., who had that faraway look that models sometimes have, the kind that simultaneously conveys hunger, fatigue, and a general disgust of anything with a pulse.

“He’ll have nothing,” said L.D. “Take his water glass away.”

“Okey doke.” I grabbed the water glass and removed it from the table.

I went to the bar to order the vodka and cranberry from the bartender, an older, portly guy in his late fifties who had taken a liking to me from the start because I was from New York. He had spent some time there in the seventies and eighties, he said, sleeping around and doing a shit-ton of drugs. He didn’t age too well because of it. He made it clear that Chicago had not been his first choice, but he had settled down with a nice guy and they had two small lap dogs.

“Can I get a Cape Codder for table ten, Robert?”

“Of course, my dear,” he said. He had a deep, raspy voice but feminine mannerisms, which resulted in him seeming both fatherly and motherly. I found the juxtaposition soothing. “What’s the daddy having?” I was confused and I must have looked it. He asked again: “I assume the sissy drink is for the bitch on the leash. What’s daddy drinking?”

“The one on the leash isn’t having anything. The vodka cranberry is for the . . . master?”

A look of sheer repulsion came over his face. I was glad he had his back to them. “In my day,” he said, “a leather daddy top wouldn’t be caught dead drinking punch.” He made the drink and pushed it across the service area to me. “Goddamn poseurs,” he said. I put a lime wheel on the rim of the glass and added a swizzle stick because that’s the way I had been taught to garnish a Cape Codder.

When I arrived back at the table, S.B. was looking out the window at nothing in particular and L.D. was examining his own fingernails.

“Here we go, one vodka and cran—”

“I didn’t ask for lime.” He removed the lime wheel and tossed it like a miniature Frisbee at S.B., who didn’t even flinch. It hit his chest below the harness and landed in his lap.

“—berry. Okaayyyy.” I worried that the acidic lime juice would stain S.B.’s leather pants. “Do you want me to take that from you?” I held out my palm to take the lime.

S.B. didn’t answer. I was starting to get the feeling someone had taken a few too many downers before dinner.

“Angel hair with shrimp,” L.D. said, handing me both menus.

“You got it,” I replied. I assumed S.B. needed to eat too. He looked so hungry. “Can I get you anything?”

“Don’t talk to him,” snapped L.D. At this point, I was starting to get a little pissed off. I mean, I can talk to whomever the hell I want, especially if he’s a full-grown man sitting in my station and it’s my freakin’ job to bring him food. Plus, I really don’t like being told what to do, but I needed the job and didn’t want to make a scene.

*

As I mentioned, leather really isn’t my thing. And dominance and submission stuff has never really resonated with me either. It goes against what is probably my most fervent core value: fairness. Damon and I say things to each other like, “I’ll choose the restaurant, you choose the movie,” “I’ll cut the sandwich in two, you choose which half you want,” “I’ll go down to the hotel lobby and get coffee while you poop if you’ll do the same for me.”

That’s not to say people into dominance and submission, or D&S, lack a sense of fairness. Fairness has nothing to do with it, I know. It’s a power exchange. Each person is getting something they want, either by assuming power or relinquishing it. My very close friend Ellen taught me all about it.

Ellen’s a very pretty Colombian woman in her forties who takes her kids to hockey practice and dancing lessons like millions of other American moms. She’s maybe five foot three and a hundred pounds. If you saw her on the street you might assume she sold clothes in a high-end boutique or ran a small art gallery. She’s had a little fascination with dominance since she was a teenager, she told me. When she was single, she enjoyed seeing how far she could push men before they broke. For example, she’d call a guy in the middle of the night and ask him to bring her a pint of ice cream. Or she’d say she needed a ride to the airport at 6 a.m., and when the guy showed up, she would tell him the trip was canceled. Because she was very beautiful, men pretty much did what she asked them to do.

She eventually married a man who got so fed up with her “games” that he snapped and moved to Europe. Needing cash, she discovered on the Internet that she could make thousands of dollars doing what she had been doing for free. I told her I was concerned for her safety, but she assured me she wasn’t working in some dungeon basement. Basically, she would go on very public dates—no sex—and treat her customers like crap.